Newsday up against pay wall pittance

Here is one paid model for online journalism that isn't exactly setting the world on fire: Nearly three months after Newsday put its Web site behind a pay wall, Newsday.com has attracted only 35 subscribers.

In addition, traffic to the Long Island daily's site has dropped by half, according to Nielsen.

Cablevision Systems Corp. bought the paper from Tribune Co. for $650 million in 2008, and sees it as a way to compete with Verizon FiOS, which has been rolling out Internet and video service on Long Island. Access to Newsday.com became an added benefit of being a cable customer.

From that point of view, the paid model is working.

"Our strategy is proceeding according to plan," a Newsday spokeswoman said." We have a more engaged, increasingly local audience."

She added that ComScore numbers show that the site's traffic has been growing sequentially since after the pay well went up.

Newsday.com can be accessed free by the paper's home subscribers, as well as by Cablevision customers and subscribers to the cable operator's Optimum Online broadband service.

According to the paper, that means about 75% of Long Island households just have to register to have access. Anyone else who wants to read the paper online has to pay $5 per week.

Still, the number of online subscribers shocked members of Newsday's union—Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—which is in a bitter fight with the paper's management over a proposed contract offer that would cut pay by 10%.

Newsday Publisher Terry Jimenez disclosed the number during a meeting with employees last Thursday in which he presented management's case for its latest offer.

The offer was turned down on Sunday, and the number has become one more example to a demoralized staff of the ways in which Cablevision and the paper have different interests.

Writers and reporters have been unhappy with their diminished influence, now that readers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Albany no longer see their stories on the Web. To find out that the pay wall wasn't contributing any revenue added insult to injury.

“People were expecting it to make money,” said a Newsday staffer who was at the meeting. “If it's not, why are we doing it?”

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